Damnation Alley - 8-bit wars competition entry

Started by Xerra, January 27, 2019, 18:50:00

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Steve Elliott

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Xerra

Another update now that we're at 4 weeks to go. I've got a list of stuff thats into pages of things I still have to do for this game - and that's without the stuff I want if I have time. Never thought this game would be as tough to put together as it's actually turning out. Oh we love a challenge :)

This video has a preview of both music tracks I'm using in the game. I switched out the original title music as I wasn't completely sure on it and it was overpriced if I wanted to licence it. Neither of these tracks are costing me a penny, thanks to the generosity of the authors who I'll credit in the game.

I have the player car firing correctly now. As it was a scrolling road they're on it turned out to be a bit more fiddly than I thought to get that working right.

The shop to pick up weapons is in now - although it's not got any background graphics or anything like that. Don't know what I'm going to do with that later on - if anything - but I wanted the functionality working now as the weapons need to go in and I didn't fancy putting in keys to do all that and then just ripping it all out afterwards. I demo the shop in the video but it's not set to trigger when the car drives into a shop as yet.

There's a zone transition thing i've got a rough screen in for as well which I trigger at the top of the first zone. Video doesn't progress beyond there as the other 3 zones are mostly just empty maps at present.

The car movement has been improved but it still needs animation adjustments for the speed of the vehicle and the left/right speeds, so it's going to be moving about a bit different when you actually play it.

http://retroevolved.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Damnation-V0.07.mp4

These videos are done with Snagit as MP4 and look a bit jerky when played. The game runs a lot smoother, I promise.
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Latest game - https://xerra.itch.io/Gridrunner
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GaborD

Looks really cool!
The transition is nicely oldschool too, good fit.


Naughty Alien

..last night i watched movie from 1977 with same name..lol..hehe

Xerra

Quote from: Naughty Alien on March 04, 2019, 00:58:50
..last night i watched movie from 1977 with same name..lol..hehe

The movie is based on the original book "Damnation Alley"

The book is very good but the movie is complete shit. The author hated it but had no input on how it turned out, unfortunately. I chose the name based on the book because I read it as a kid.
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Naughty Alien

..Landmaster was surprisingly well built  ;D

3DzForMe

Love the sound effects and accompanying music. Who needs Forza 7!
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Xerra

Quote from: 3DzForMe on March 04, 2019, 21:23:51
Love the sound effects and accompanying music. Who needs Forza 7!

Sound effects? I've got a couple of menu beeps and a w.i.p firing sound. Nothing much else. What video were you watching? :-)

The in-game music is a remix of the original Peter Gunn theme that used to play whenever the player car left the lorry in Spy Hunter on the C64. A chap called Mozzaratti composed it for a YouTube video about 5 years and has given me permission to use it.
M2 Pro Mac mini - 16GB 512 SSD
ACER Nitro 5 15.6" Gaming Laptop - Intel® Core™ i7, RTX 3050, 1 TB SSD
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Latest game - https://xerra.itch.io/Gridrunner
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3DzForMe

Sorry, I meant the in game music, made me smile! Who says eight bit sound can't be hi fidelity?
BLitz3D, IDEal, AGK Studio, BMax, Java Code, Cerberus
Recent Hardware: Dell Laptop
Oldest Hardware: Commodore Amiga 1200 with 1084S Monitor & Blitz Basic 2.1

Xerra

Current video of Damnation Alley as of Sunday evening.

https://youtu.be/Bz4L6jiPaEY

Very rough vehicle movement - especially with impacts. I've got a lot of work to do tidying it all up but I finally mostly completed my custom objects system that let me keep the road filled with other cars to shoot/ram/avoid.

I've tried to demonstrate how to destroy these guys when they're near a wall but it's a bit tricky with the basic movement system they have so far. Every vehicle is running from a parent vehicle that just tries to avoid colliding with either wheel and just drives up the zone. The AI for each vehicle will need to be separate so I'm kind of extending each of the child objects to have their own individual code specific to them.

Police car, Truck, Normal car, Civilians card are all present right now - not that they do much. But they will .... ;-)

I've not finished with the other 3 zones yet but I've made a start with the fixed elements and put in some snow tiles for background on the later levels. Still have some graphics work to do to modify some of the tiles I have to look correct - especially the sloped ones.

A long way to go, in a now very short amount of time, but I'm still hoping to get this one over the line in time.
M2 Pro Mac mini - 16GB 512 SSD
ACER Nitro 5 15.6" Gaming Laptop - Intel® Core™ i7, RTX 3050, 1 TB SSD
Vic 20 - 3.5k 1mhz 6502

Latest game - https://xerra.itch.io/Gridrunner
Blog: http://xerra.co.uk
Itch.IO: https://xerra.itch.io/

MrmediamanX

#70
Hey you got a YT channel ... nice, gotta sub to that.
looking solid so far albeit the car on car collision being a tad bit static/jumpy, no doubt changes are on the way for that, don't sweat it you got it. :)  still looking forward to playing this though.
It's a thing that doe's when it don't..

iWasAdam

looking very nice :)

minor suggestion: Make the motorbike sprite half the width - it sorta looks bigger (wider) than the cars...  8)

Xerra

Quote from: iWasAdam on March 12, 2019, 08:17:07
looking very nice :)

minor suggestion: Make the motorbike sprite half the width - it sorta looks bigger (wider) than the cars...  8)

Motorbike is a place holder. The colours aren't even right yet. I'll just flip it out and draw another, gulp, or maybe make it thinner and see if multipaint colours it better than I could.

Note the tribute car to Ghostbusters for the innocent civilian cars that you should avoid shooting? That baby is all mine.
M2 Pro Mac mini - 16GB 512 SSD
ACER Nitro 5 15.6" Gaming Laptop - Intel® Core™ i7, RTX 3050, 1 TB SSD
Vic 20 - 3.5k 1mhz 6502

Latest game - https://xerra.itch.io/Gridrunner
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craigd

This looks awesome. Spy Hunter was a firm favourite for me in the arcades. Cannot wait to give this a blast! Good luck man :)

Xerra

I'd say I'm around 80% done on this game now.

Completed this week:
3 of the 4 zones are now complete apart from doing a bit more background area tile graphics that are outside the scope of gameplay.
The car handling is improved and the basic AI works a bit better now. Still a lot of tweaking on this and collision adjusting to do, hence no video today.
Moving between all 4 zones is now possible because I finally put in finish lines.

Still to do:
Sound effects
Individual vehicle types AI.
Players car death by road and river.
Better screens for game over and Zone completion.
Player car weapons (smoke, oil and - hopefully - missiles).
Implement the auto parking for driving into the weapons shop.
Level system (Easy/Normal/Hard) which I plan to use to control number of vehicles on screen and how much impact bounce players car has.
Incorporate my loading screen InvadeAload into the game.

Back to the code .... AaAAarrrggghhh :)
M2 Pro Mac mini - 16GB 512 SSD
ACER Nitro 5 15.6" Gaming Laptop - Intel® Core™ i7, RTX 3050, 1 TB SSD
Vic 20 - 3.5k 1mhz 6502

Latest game - https://xerra.itch.io/Gridrunner
Blog: http://xerra.co.uk
Itch.IO: https://xerra.itch.io/